Achim Kretschmer

Achim Kretschmer is the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Information Technology at MercyFirst. Achim was recruited to restructure and streamline IT processes after a merger. Achim developed a long-term technical strategy and initiatives, and worked closely with the executive team to unified diverse platforms into a state of the art infrastructure. Achim consolidated telephony systems of all sites under one vendor, achieved immediate ROI plus 65% in consistent annual savings. Achim is currently working on an Office 365 migration, Exchange hosting, and finalizing an EHR database application migration into the cloud. Achim is fine-tuning a newly implemented wireless access system across all sites, including guest network, as well as VLAN creation for a recently completed layer 3 switch refresh company wide. Achim'sstrategic contributions have overhauled the infrastructure of outdated systems and transformed the company network into a 1GB environment across all offices and sites; adopted a hybrid of high-performing in-house SSD servers and a hosted environment for Fiscal, HR, EHR and EMR servers. Achim has achieved near 100% uptime while lowering operational costs by 75%. Achim was instrumental in the company merger through leadership across departments; consolidated domains, wrote GPOs and created new HIPAA compliant security structures for file servers and databases. Achim fulfilled a challenge to implement a comprehensive and proven DRaaS solution that has resulted in IT service continuity to reach near 100% uptime and 0% data loss since execution; simulating virtual and bare metal server restores frequently. Achim spearheaded the replacement of all firewalls from main and branch offices with one centrally controlled and redundant Sophos firewall solution, and designed and deployed a comprehensive camera surveillance system with 175+ cameras across 8 sites. Achim transformed the department from a reactive, mercurial unit into a proactive, accountable and fully ITIL integrated support team. Achim streamlined processes and operations, lowered total cost of ownership (TCO), and increased efficiencies through innovative technologies and procedures.

Achim Kretschmer has a Bachelor of Arts from Queens College, a Marine Biology and Aquaculture degree from Nova Southeastern University, and a Marine Biology and Biological Oceanography degree from the Sea Education Association. Achim is also MCSE and Sophos Certified Architect.